The former technical director of Scuderia Ferrari and Mercedes in F1, Aldo Costa, believes that Aston Martin made a major mistake in how it integrated Adrian Newey into its project.
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These criticisms come as Aston Martin is going through a catastrophic start to the 2026 season despite the highly publicized arrival of Newey and the new engine partnership with Honda.
The team has been suffering for several months from problems with vibrations, reliability, and engine behavior, far from the ambitions displayed during the construction of the project around Lawrence Stroll.
A counterproductive attitude
Costa even questions the overall direction taken by Aston Martin, including regarding its driver duo composed of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll: “The potential? I don’t know,” he said on the podcast Terruzzi Racconta. Maybe I don’t really like the Alonso-Stroll duo, even from a mentality point of view.”
For Costa, a respected engineer now heading Dallara, the current performances are particularly worrying given the huge investments made by Aston Martin in recent years: “Cadillac isn’t even really in the game yet, he points out. But Aston Martin is worse than what its potential should allow.”
The Italian engineer was particularly critical of Newey’s attitude after the Melbourne disaster, when the famous designer publicly pointed the finger at Honda. Costa considers this outburst totally inappropriate: “I’ll be very clear: I had never before seen such a misplaced, violent, and public attack by Newey, right at the start of a championship, against his own partner. It simply isn’t done because it’s counterproductive.”
Not a team principal profile
According to Costa, this episode mainly reveals deeper management problems inside the team: “It highlighted a lack of direction and a lack of leadership. When they say: ‘In November we went to Japan and saw that they weren’t using the same people as in their previous F1 project and that they were behind…’ In November? You should have known that before November.”
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For the Italian technician, a real team principal publicly protects his organization in difficult times: “A boss should never say: ‘When we win, I win and when we lose, it’s your fault.’ If you are a good leader, it’s exactly the opposite.”
The former leader of Ferrari and Mercedes also thinks that Newey’s true genius remains essentially technical and not organizational: “I have never worked directly with him, but I have immense respect for him. He is probably the most brilliant person in the history of F1 technically. But everyone who has worked with him also says that his talent is more technical than organizational or managerial.”
A fragile health?
It is precisely for this reason that Costa considers Newey found an ideal environment at Red Bull Racing: “He needs to be surrounded and supported by a solid structure. At Red Bull, even though he played an essential role, he wasn’t even officially technical director.”
These statements come as Aston Martin seems to be quietly reorganizing Newey’s role internally after his highly publicized arrival. Several British media have also recently revealed that the 66-year-old engineer may have gone through health problems and now works partially from home after a hospitalization.
All this gives the impression of an Aston Martin project still far from having found the balance it hoped to achieve by attracting one of the most legendary figures of modern Formula 1.
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